Church History for Everybody

This 12-volume set documents the church from its earliest days to 2001, with lavish illustration, original source material, and literate commentary.

The Christians: Their First Two Thousand Years, edited and published by Ted Byfield.  Twelve Volumes, 2002-2012.

I’ve been in church all my life.  I’ve been around Christians all my life.  I’ve read the Bible all my life, and after the Bible my most consistent form of reading is history.  So why is it that I, like most Christians, are much more knowledgeable about the church’s first 70 years than about the remaining 1,840?  Why do most of us know more about Abraham Lincoln than Athanasius, more about the Boston Tea Party than the Pelagian heresy?  It could be argued that Athanasius and Pelagius affect a Christian even more directly than Lincoln or the Sons of Liberty.  And even though God rules all history, only the church will endure beyond history.

 But here’s what my view of church history looks like: Acts, martyrs, fall of Jerusalem, um um um various heresies (which I can’t keep straight) um um um Constantine um fall of Rome um Augustine um um um um dark ages, Popes named Pius and Gregory um um Crusades . . .

 There’s really no excuse for ignorance, especially now that an accessible, practical, concise survey of the entire sweep of church history is available.  The Christians: Their First Two Thousand Years is a twelve-volume set produced by the Christian History Project, conceived and published by the Canadian journalist Ted Byfield.  The first volume appeared in 2002 but I didn’t know anything about them until just a couple of years ago, when Marvin Olasky wrote about them in WORLD Magazine.  To the used booksellers I go, namely abebooks.com, where I have been able to find the first five volumes at a price lower than the suggested retail.  I’ll probably have to—over time–cough up the $59-plus-postage per volume for the rest of them, but I think they’ll be worth it.

 Do you remember the old Time/Life history series? (Are they still publishing those?)  Beautiful cloth-bound volumes in readable type, with quality illustrations and photographs and an engrossing narrative interspersed with sidebars.  That’s the kind of books I’m talking about, only better and longer.  Not the last word in scholarship, but how many of us are scholars?  Instead, probably the most comprehensive resource available for inquisitive laymen—and their kids.  I was amazed, for instance, to discover how long, complicated, and bloody the Fall of Jerusalem was—a tragedy in every way, and to a great extent the Jews pulled the city down on their own heads.  It certainly put Matthew 24:2 in context.   

The twelve volumes are these: AD 30-70: The Veil is Torn (Pentecost to the Fall of Jerusalem); AD70-250: A Pinch of Incense (to the Decian Persecution); 250-350: By This Sign Conquer (to Constantine); 350-565: Darkness Descends (Fall of the Western Roman Empire); 565-740: The Sword of Islam (Christendom almost destroyed); 740-1100: The Quest for the City (Christendom re-established); 1100-1300: The Glorious Disaster (the Crusades and their fallout); 1300-1500: The Renaissance: God in Man (Medieval Christianity comes to an end); 1500-1600: A Century of Giants (the Reformation); 1600-1800: We the People (Democracy, Christianity’s unintended achievement); 1800-1914: Unto the Ends of the Earth (the Faith advances as never before).  The High Tide and the Turn, from 1914 to 2001, brought the series to a close early this year.

Most of the series is available through Amazon and other online booksellers, but if you’re interested in buying all-new volumes you can actually get a better price from the project website.  There are three options: buy individual volumes separately at $59 each; subscribe for all 12 volumes over two years at $49 each (about $28/month with postage included); or buy the whole set for $499.  I realize not many families can afford this, at least not all in one gulp, but it might be worth considering for your church library.  (The Veil Is Torn, as I mentioned, can be had for less than $10 on abebooks.)

For more church and church-related history, some of our favorite authors are Douglas Bond, William Boekestein, and Simonetta Carr.